A woman who surrendered child abuse material she kept "as evidence" to police needs the "clear assistance" of full-time rehabilitation, a judge has said.
"It's time to turn your life around, you understand that?" Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson told the offender during a sentence hearing on Friday.
"Yes," Chelsea Amalia Crivici, aged in her late 20s, responded quietly as she looked up from her seat in the ACT Supreme Court dock.
Crivici has pleaded guilty to two counts of using a carriage service to transmit child abuse material and one count of possessing child exploitation material.
She previously said co-offender Peter Henderson sent her the material and that she was "trying to play cop" by keeping his hard drive containing 2178 files for five months.
"I didn't really know what to do. I knew it was horrific," Crivici, who denies any sexual interest in children, said in April.
Henderson is in the process of appealing his jail sentence, of two years and four months, on "error of law" grounds.
He was given a 10-month non-parole period in May after police discovered images and videos in his possession said to include 1000 individual child victims.
Crivici, who described herself as "really lonely" when she first met Henderson on Tinder, eventually turned in the material and herself.
She did so after Henderson spoke about something she said "sounded a lot more like a plan than fantasy".
Justice Loukas-Karlsson told media sitting in the public gallery it was crucial they report on Crivici surrendering the material to police.
"It seems to me that it's for Ms Crivici's and the community's benefit that she actually does have full-time drug and alcohol rehabilitation," Justice Loukas-Karlsson said.
The court heard the offender was diagnosed with complex PTSD, autism spectrum disorder, and alcohol use disorder, the latter of which was in remission.
A psychologist also found Crivici's "already impaired ... ability to reason, make decisions" would have been further impaired as she tried to navigate the circumstances that amounted to her offending.
Commonwealth prosecutor Laura Hannigan said this reduced the offender's moral culpability to a degree but the psychologist was "explicit about the fact that [Crivici's] mental health cannot entirely explain her actions".
Justice Loukas-Karlsson adjourned the matter for two weeks so defence could enquire about appropriate residential rehabilitation, where Crivici could live full-time.
"You cannot keep living the way you've been living. Something has to change," the judge told her.
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